Wandering the double mazes of infertility and living in a foreign culture.

Friday, 17 February 2012

Slowly slowly...

Repeat scan yesterday was fine. Not sure how many follicles at what sizes, as while they measure all of them, they only do three while you're actually in 'the chair.' Lead follicle on the left was at 1cm. The next two at 0.8cm. Lining 0.6cm. Repeat scan at *yuck* 7.30am Saturday morning. I imagine that will be when the cetrotide comes into the mix. Great.

I feel really bloated on the left side, and that's where most of the follicles seemed to be yesterday. It's quite uncomfortable even to lie down, and I'm up super early today (though that's partly because I have so much to do today for work.)

I ended up at the clinic for two hours yesterday. Luckily I had expected to be there for at least an hour, so I didn't get too frustrated. I knew I had to do the following: ultrasound, see Dr K, blood draw, EKG, chest x-ray, pharmacy, injection room. The last one I could have skipped and just done it myself, but I've not primed a Gonal-F pen myself before (they always do it for you) and as I was headed directly to work, rather than home, I wouldn't have really had any privacy to sit and work it out properly. By the way, doing injections in the bathroom stall is not as bad as I expected.

Dr K commented yet again that I am responding 'slowly.' I pointed out to him that he makes this comment every cycle we do together, and that perhaps we could just consider it normal for me. He agreed. I don't blame him for not remembering my last fresh cycle as it was last June, and he must have treated literally thousands of other women since then!

I'm quite happy to be going slowly, so long as I don't prematurely ovulate or anything. Given the somewhat unscientific evidence that the luteal phase of my cycle seems to shorten depending on how many days are before the trigger, I'm happy for the stimm period to be a few days longer than 'normal.' Every day I'm doing frantic mental calculations: if the pre-trigger stage is 3 days plus 9 days of stimming = 12 days x 2 = roughly a 24 day cycle. That might give my embryos a fighting chance... Ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

I'm not a fertility specialist, but I do know that the logic in the paragraph above is probably flawed and that my mental calculations will make no difference to the outcome. However I do it to keep myself sane and to believe we might be in with a fighting chance this time. Yesterday I was oddly optimistic, and Dr K seemed to be as well.

It's strange because I never quite know where to put myself on the glass half full half empty scale. In most other elements of my life I subscribe to the 'things will work out in the way they are meant to be' theory. I think I do believe that if IVF doesn't work out for us eventually, there is some 'reason' for it.

Over the last year or so I have seen the full range of emotions from IF bloggers. I've seen wild optimism result in joy but also in misery. I've seen the gloomiest, most pessimistic bloggers rewarded with both success and failure. I've seen enough to know that mental state seems to have no bearing on success rate, despite what positive thinking advocates would have you believe.

My previous argument was that if you are realistic and don't get your hopes up too much, then it's easier to deal with it if a cycle results in failure. But is it though? If we truly believed, deep down, that a cycle is going to fail, then we wouldn't bother to go through it. Does feeling optimistic and allowing yourself to imagine a possible future make the fall any harder if it comes?

8 comments:

Anonymous
said...

My feelings change daily. Even more. But I always hold hope and try to be positive about the future. Realistically we all have a chance. I have decided that I loathe the word 'infertile' an consider myself 'fertility challenged'. I can't see my life with not overcoming this battle, so I have no choice but to keep trying.

I vascilate between optimism and pescimism by the day...heck, by the minute. It hasn't affected the outcome as of yet, nor does it affect the frustration and misery that follows a failed cycle. I used to be the one who told people to just stay positive, but I've since given up on that.

I really don't think that attitude has any effect on the outcome, so we might as well accept that we feel the way that we feel, rather than beating ourselves up for being too negative or too positive. We all just have to get through the day in the end.

I don't think that attitude effects it much either. I think stress will effect it so find the attitude that results in the least amount of stress (I know, impossible not to stress!) and go with it. I am doing my first IVF and there are days where I think this is going to work and then there are days where I am like why kid yourself! Oh, the joys of IF!

I remember getting stressed because I responded slowly. I thought it would mean that it was not going to work for us because I was a slow responder. It doesn't matter how you get there, as long as you do!

I tried to stay positive during mine. Not because I thought it would have any bearing on the outcome (logically how could it?) but because I thought that even if it doesn't work, me having spent weeks worrying about it before-hand would not make it any easier for me to handle. Also, it was Christmas and I didn't want to be miserable over Christmas. Despite this, I would have doubts. I would tell myself it would work, but deep down I didn't really believe it. I know this because I still don't.

Each to their own and whatever works for you.

I think about you quite often and am really willing it to be third time lucky for you.

Hope and realism is so hard to balance.. and I've never been able to do it during a cycle... esp with all the hormones. IVF/ART is a nightmare... and I agree that attitude probably doesn't make much difference... except to the disappointment at the BFNs. FXd for you xoxo

People will always say that their attitude (or something they did/said/ ate/thought) gave them their BFP if lucky enough to get one but I never bought that...as a wise woman one said (you!) 'it's a numbers game'...each try is one step closer to finding out if we'll be lucky or not. Still following you anyway on your journey x